Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

must have used as their source a biblical text that agreed with the

Qumran scroll. Josephus even adds further support (Ant.5.45-57) insofar

as he does not narrate a building of the altar where the MT places it, be-

tween the conquest of Ai (Josh. 8:1-29) and the Gibeonites’ ruse (Joshua

9). An additional piece of the puzzle is provided by the SP, which reads

“Mount Gerizim,” in agreement with an Old Greek papyrus and the Old

Latin, which reads “Garzin,” at Deut. 27:4, the command that is the basis

for this episode in Joshua. Thus 4QJoshaevidently provides a more origi-

nal form of the narrative. The placement of that first altar in the land has

serious consequences, of course, and the most plausible reading of the

textual evidence is that 4QJoshahas the earliest sequence and that a

northern faction (Samarians or Samaritans) secondarily rearranged the

location of the altar at their sacred shrine on Mt. Gerizim. At a third stage,

in counterreaction, southerners (Judeans or rabbis), due to religious po-

lemics, simply changed the name of the mountain from Gerizim to Ebal,

despite the anomaly created.

Judges

The oldest manuscript of the book of Judges (4QJudga), dating from about

50-25b.c.e., survives in but a single small fragment. It contains Judg. 6:2-6

followed directly by vv. 11-13. It lacks 6:7-10, a separate unit whose style dif-

fers from the preceding and following verses and appears to be a later theo-

logical insertion. Thus, again, the Qumran text of Judges exhibits an early,

short form of Judges 6, and the MT has a secondary, theologically ex-

panded version.

Samuel

4QSama, dating from near the mid-first centuryb.c.e., contains a form of

text that included a complete paragraph that is not present in the MT, the

LXX, or any other extant version. It narrates the oppression by Nahash the

Ammonite that introduces the material now found in 1 Sam. 11:1 in the MT

and other texts. The fragment itself contains a case of a scribal skip of the

eye (parablepsis), which lends support to the probability that the passage

was lost in the MT tradition through the same kind of error. Parallel to

Josephus’s agreement with 4QJosha, he also shows that he used a text of

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The Jewish Scriptures: Texts, Versions, Canons

EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:03:58 PM